Estate Matters Episode 9: George Eustice - Insights from a former Environment Minister on politics and land management
Former Environment Secretary George Eustice warns farmers and estate owners that an incoming Labour government could impose new wealth taxes on land to help it pay for investment in public services.
The MP for Camborne, Redruth and Hayle, who spent nine years as a Minister at Defra, rising to become Secretary of State in 2020, makes the prediction in a remarkably frank conversation with KOR Communications’ podcast host Anna Byles in the latest episode of Estate Matters.
Mr Eustice will stand down at the next election and has launched a new enterprise, Penbroath Consulting, for businesses in the farming, environment and development sectors.
He says good communications are vital for landed estates and that they have positive stories to tell, particularly as Britain faces the challenges of managing land for food production, mitigating climate change and improving the environment.
The Conservative MP worked in his family’s West Cornwall farming business before entering politics, campaigning to keep Britain out of the Euro. He later became press secretary to David Cameron when he was the Leader of the opposition, a job he describes as “exhausting, but exhilarating.”
He tells the podcast he is confident much of the legislation he put in place while Secretary of State, affecting farming, fishing and the environment will not be changed if Labour come to power. But he says there is a strong chance Sir Keir Starmer will consider the rising value of land over the past 20 years as a windfall - and will want to tax it.
“The really big problem facing a Labour government is that they will instinctively want to spend more on certain priorities, but they will quickly also realise that there is no way they can move the big-ticket items like National Insurance, VAT or Income Tax and therefore the temptation to go scrumping for a wealth tax is very high – that’s the biggest threat to estates,” Mr Eustice warns.
In a wide-ranging conversation, Mr Eustice outlines the business battles his farming family faced as a result of rising interest rates and issues with the banks in the 1990s, when he was in his early 20s. Those challenges inspired his move into politics.
He speaks of his admiration for former Prime Minister David Cameron – now Lord Cameron and back in the Cabinet as Foreign Secretary – but criticises his decision to go for the Brexit referendum in 2016 which led to Britain leaving the EU.
Mr Eustice’s first move into politics was as a member of UKIP and he contested the Euro elections of 1999 for the party. He also voted for Brexit and campaigned for Leave in the run up to the 2016 Brexit vote.
But Mr Eustice tells Estate Matters it would have been possible for Britain to remain in the European Union if Mr Cameron had allowed more time to negotiate for the return of some powers to the UK. He reveals he pressed Mr Cameron and the PM’s chief of staff at the time, Ed Llewellyn, for a delay to the referendum.
“The problem that we suffered from was that David Cameron was in a hurry to get the referendum done,” Mr Eustice says.
He goes on: “I regret that David Cameron didn’t take longer to do a sensible renegotiation because I think there was a model where the UK could have shown a different way of the EU working.”
But he says once it became clear there were only two choices – accept the EU as it is or leave – there was only one way for Conservative MPs like him to vote. And he says he has no regrets in helping to take Britain out of the Union insisting that, post-Brexit, farmers and fisherman are better off.
In a series of insights that will be fascinating to all those in estate management, agriculture and politics, Mr Eustice provides a unique inside view of the changes that have affected land use in tumultuous times – and offers well-informed predictions of what’s to come.